After The Fairytale
by Katseng
Summary: Ten times Sai muses on what he can never have. Character death. Onesided Sai/Saku, impl. Saku/Ino


**Author:** katseng

**Title:** After The Fairytale

**Rating:** T, though there are some "bad words"

**Characters: **Sai, Sakura, smatterings of Kakashi, Ino, and others.

**Summary:** Ten times Sai muses on what he can never have.

**Author's Notes:** "No Children" – The Mountain Goats is highly recommended… along with a host of other songs, though none of those are even English necessarily. Feel free to ask. :D

I feel like there are some pretty long sentences that could do with some breaking up. Point them out please? :D I am supposed to be studying for my Psych final right now (AFF-ective neuroscience, actually) and Oceanography too, I guess, but _screw_ that. I'll probably have to revise this one day when I get too embarrassed of it to bear it any longer but here it is until then. **Your input would be really, really nice.**

**(Revised Aug. 14, 2009 because I really did get too embarrassed of it to bear any longer.)**

**(Revised again for minor errors on Sept. 20, 2009. And I changed the song from "Destroy, She Said" to "No Children". "Grapevine Fires" is also quite lovely.)**

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After The Fairytale

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_1. Laughter _

Her laughter flits around him, light and distinctively feminine, interspersed with snorts that she firmly denies immediately after she regains the capacity to breathe; the feeling that sweeps up his stomach is unlike anything he ever remembered reading about before and it somehow reminds him of a home that he never remembered and a feeling he associated with the brother that he vaguely did.

_2. Chakra_

The first time she heals him with her chakra, he is a little bit surprised. It is light and soothing, and though she warns him earlier that the procedure is invasive and will likely get uncomfortable – _but there is nothing that I can do about it, you stupid boy! I told you not to_ – the warm glow suffuses and blends with his own and it is nothing like he had imagined it to be. It induces a tingling sensation that makes him want to burst with some unknown emotion bubbling up inside of him, because really, all emotions had always been unidentified and discarded up till now.

_3. Conformity_

He has always known that he is just a replacement to her; there will always be the shadows of the Other Boy, the Original Boy of Team Seven, the one that she has never really let go. Their appearances are too similar for him to ever be a truly distinct entity in her mind. And really, that is okay; he has no identity of his own (that he likes, at least) to lose. He isn't really Sai, of course – Sai is just one of many identities that they gave him to fulfill another mission – he just happens to like being "Sai" a bit more than his other identities. So if the picture that she had in her head of him is someone different than who he is now, that is okay. He can change.

He has nothing to lose after all.

_4. Break_

He sees her rupture the earth with her fists when she's angry and he thinks how easy it would be for her to break him. He can imagine her not-so-delicate calloused hand on his throat, tightening on his windpipe and collapsing bones and cartilage and muscle until there is nothingnothingnothing but a gaping, bloody hole where his neck used connect his head to his body. A chakra scalpel and the same effect with little extra charge.

But then he remembers that he is a force to reckon with as well _-- I hereby initiate you into the venerable organization of ROOT-- _and will just ask likely slip out of her grasp as spill ink-blood onto her hands. He has, he muses, been in this business for far longer than she, after all.

He still remains wary of her anger, though.

_5. Rings_

"Shut up and move out!" Her stage-whispered command to her team echoes in his ears past the roaring wind as he flies on chakra-infused legs away from the area where the last Iwa-nin troops are seen – Iwa-nin who are supposed to be no where near the area. After dozens of miles fly past, their adrenaline runs low again and sheer exhaustion from their month-long mission followed by a sprint-fest starts to show in their lagging speed so she calls it a night and takes first watch. Though he is incredibly tired, he is too restless to sleep and asks to change shifts with her.

"Tired shinobi make stupid mistakes, which, in turn, make dead shinobi. Sleep when I tell you to. Got it?" she tells him, finishing just as she unwillingly breaks into one of the largest yawns he has ever borne witness to. He nods and makes as if to leave her on the branch she is 'keeping watch' on when he leans back towards her whisper-quick and knocks her out with two fingers that she should have easily blocked had she not been so tired. He catches her before she falls and, the next morning, she swears that she will pull his intestines out through his throat the next time he tries something like that. He quietly notes that the puffy black rings under her eyes have slightly receded so he does not mind as she swears at him under her breath for the rest of the day.

_6. Bubble_

The first time he sees a volcano erupt, it is on a mission with her. They are in, of course, Earth Country on some stupid diplomatic mission and it is very, very hot. She has modified her clothes slightly so there is more skin showing than usual under her medic gear. His shirt is already short and if he wants to cut back on cloth he will have to start removing weapons as well so he suffers through the heat.

They trek up the smoldering mountain side of one of the active volcanoes that, along with its hot springs, the region is so famous for. Though Sakura grumbles that it isn't worth melting in the heat to see some _more_ rock in Earth Country and Sai secretly agrees, they head on out nonetheless when she starts worrying that she'll end up pruney for the rest of her life if she stays in the water for one more minute.

When they look down, they see the reddish orange lava bubbling furiously beneath them and feel the scorching heat beating against their bodies. They stand stock-still in awe and not a little bit of trepidation. As Sakura visibly tenses when horrible memories of a vicious, bloodthirsty chakra just this particular colour and viscosity overcome her, he cautiously moves closer to her and she unconsciously grabs his forearm and leaves deep crescents behind as she grips it like a lifeline.

They never mention the volcano to Naruto when he asks how the trip went.

_7. Twitch_

Sakura's eyelid twitches again and she lets out a string of curses strong enough to make the herd of seasoned ninja and civilians milling around her in the hospital corridor take a step away in caution. "Damnit," she says, mostly to herself, "My eyelid just won't st—"and then she faints.

He, of course, is not there to catch her when she falls. In fact, no one does because none of them have the guts to interfere with an Angry Sakura – she ends up ungracefully crumbled on the sterile linoleum floor until someone garners the courage to run and notify Tsunade-sama. He is, however, there when she wakes up two days later, still groggy from the first real sleep she has gotten in a week of long, intense cases, and receives a charming, if exhausted grin and a shameless "Hey."

_8. ANBU_

Her old sensei refuses to sponsor her because she's "just not ready" and she flashes visibly angry for a split second, ready to break the fucking—

"I see." She turns off and turns away from their team, just recently arrived from a mission, and she walks away still bloody and sweaty and grimy from her own training in slow, measured steps, crunching steadily over the dead leaves on the ground.

He is never more scared of her than he is in those moments.

She finds sponsorship elsewhere and it is winter when they next see her again. The fight is brutal and lengthy and neither nin holds much back for long. She takes advantage of the whipping wind and snow that momentarily blinds her opponent, a very strong ninja in his own right, and flashes pink and petals behind him, a hand already jabbing forward to meet a spot in his neck to render him unconscious. He feels the displacement of air however even amidst the rushing, freezing wind, and since it is a move he has been expecting for some time now, he jabs his kunai back just as her palm comes forward, leaving his knife's tip just above her heart. She sees the blade as it rushes toward her and responds with a minute lean to the side and chakra-strengthened fingers that jet forward and throw him across the stadium to leave a faint imprint decorating the wall opposite of her.

Her opponent does not get up.

She pauses to make sure that he is out of the count and she is declared the winner of this match before her strength runs out and she collapses on herself. She grasps her bloody thighs with her bloodier palms to stabilize herself, gasping for each painful breath in the crisp, brisk wind that flings her short hair around her in a pink halo. When she looks up at him on the sidelines, her grin is fierce and vicious and she strides past Kakashi – who sits near him in the bleachers reserved for those with _very _high clearance – without a glance.

_9. Taken _

He first sees the vivacious blonde with the nearly indecently short purple outfit when they all run into each other at the dango shop that she frequents. She introduces the woman as an old friend. "She _loves _nicknames," the ridiculously pink-haired woman says to him very seriously and ruins it by snickering behind her hand. He watches the girls continue to banter, forgetting his presence in their eternal competition that even he, the outsider, sees immediately. There is a tightening in his chest and he feels – something. He does not know what it is, but he is undeniably (even to himself) discomfited by this intimate camaraderie of which he is not a part.

They make inane conversation for a bit and, this time, they remember to include him into their bubble. The other girl asks about what he does and when he replies that he is an artist, her lip does not curl and her nose does not scrunch in the derision he is so used to from other nin when they hear the same answer. Instead, she nods seriously, "I see."

Sakura watches this exchange interestedly, but he only nods at the tattered poster behind the blonde's right shoulder and turns away when they are done with this inanity. He makes no further comments for the rest of the meal.

It would be easier to hate this other girl, he thinks as they bid him good night and walk to the blonde's flower shop to help close up, their hands discretely knotted as they lean unconsciously towards one another. It would be easier to hate this other girl he thinks, but he has never seen her bright face blush so prettily and happily before with anyone else so he—

He watches them walk away together and a part of him breaks.

_10. Ugly_

Months after their impromptu meeting at the dango stand, he sees her aimlessly wandering down the streets with an expression he cannot decipher. It is… decidedly blank for someone of her seemingly inexhaustible exuberance. Curious and something else, something that makes his chest oddly clench near his heart with a new feeling which he blankly notes and does not dare to analyze, he goes toward her. She does not notice him and continues ambling along. He follows her for some time until they are near the abandoned regions of the outer edges of the village when she stumbles on a rock. She does not catch herself when she falls and stares blankly at her skinned knee. She continues to stare at it for minutes longer watching it bleed lightly and just when he crouches down to snap her out of her stupor she looks vacantly up at him and says

"That bitch. She left me. She goddamn left me fucking alone." Her pink brows furrow slightly as if she just hears what she said and is still trying to absorb it.

"She promised she would— That lying pig—"

And all of a sudden her head is buried in the juncture of his neck and her fingers clench his shoulders with a strength that is sure to leave bruises for weeks and she is keening, a horrible harsh wet gasping noise that she tries to bury in his skin but it is too loud, too terrible and too absolutely devastated. He stiffens at the vulnerability of his position and then slowly leans into her, apprehensively puts his arms around her, rocking her and trying not to feel so hideously relieved hearing of a comrade's death.

After what seems like hours pass, when the wailing dies out into sobbing then into wet sniffles, she remembers herself and she slowly uncurls her fingers and extricates herself from his awkward, tentative hold, her face still screwed into a blotchy and pink and white and red personification of utter anguish. The feeling of wet snot and tears running through his shirt and down his neck is disgusting but he ignores it for a bit and does something he thinks he saw once somewhere. He grasps her face in his palms like she is the most fragile thing in the world and touches her forehead to his. They gasp in each other's air, and as her eyes squeeze shut, he whispers hoarsely, "It'll be okay, Ugly."

They both know it is a lie.


End file.
